IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbewp/021559.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Golden Handcuffs or Silver Spurs? The Implications of Inheritance Taxes for Entrepreneurship

Author

Listed:
  • Yang Zhang

    (University of Macau)

  • Ziang Qiu

    (University of Macau)

  • Donghyun Park

    (Asian Development Bank)

  • Shu Tian

Abstract

The intricate relationship between wealth redistribution policies and entrepreneurial vitality has long captivated the attention of economists and policymakers. Drawing on data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and manually collected information on inheritance taxation policy reforms across a diverse panel of 55 countries from 2000 to 2023, this study uses a staggered difference-in-differences model to examine how the changing rules for wealth transfer taxation influence entrepreneurial activity. Our results show that higher inheritance tax rates are associated with elevated entrepreneurial index scores and that rising inheritance taxes correlate with increases in the entrepreneurial index, while tax cuts correspond to declines. This finding is robust to alternative measures of key constructs and identification strategies. Our results offer valuable insights into how inheritance tax policies influence entrepreneurial behavior, providing essential guidance for policymakers and economists aiming to comprehend the intricate dynamics of wealth transfer and entrepreneurship on a global scale.

Suggested Citation

  • Yang Zhang & Ziang Qiu & Donghyun Park & Shu Tian, 2025. "Golden Handcuffs or Silver Spurs? The Implications of Inheritance Taxes for Entrepreneurship," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 805, Asian Development Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:021559
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.adb.org/publications/inheritance-taxes-entrepreneurship
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:adbewp:021559. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Orlee Velarde (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eradbph.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.